“How annoying!” answered the blue ribbons with a soft laugh.  “I missed it, too, in such a silly way.  I just ran around the corner to get some chocolate drops, and a little matter detained me a few moments; and when I came back, the train had gone.  I was so sorry, for I’m in such a hurry to get home.  Do you live in New York?”

Ester shook her head, and thought within herself:  “That is just as much sense as I should suppose you to have—­risk the chance of missing a train for the sake of a paper of candy.”

Of course Ester could not be expected to know that the chocolate drops were for the wee sister at home, whose heart would be nearly broken if sister Fanny came home, after an absence of twenty-four hours, without bringing her any thing; and the “little matter” which detained her a few moments, was joining the search after a twenty-five-cent bill which the ruthless wind had snatched from the hand of a barefooted, bareheaded, and almost forlorn little girl, who cried as violently as though her last hope in life had been blown away with it; nor how, failing in finding the treasure, the gold-clasped purse had been opened, and a crisp, new bill had been taken out to fill its place; neither am I at all certain as to whether it would have made any difference at all in Ester’s verdict, if she had known all the circumstances.

The side door opened quietly just at this point and a middle-aged man came in, carrying in one hand a tool-box, and in the other a two-story tin pail.  Both girls watched him curiously as he set these down on the floor, and, taking tacks from his pocket and a hammer from his box, he proceeded to tack a piece of paper to the wall.  Ester, from where she sat, could see that the paper was small, and that something was printed on it in close, fine type.  It didn’t look in the least like a handbill, or indeed like a notice of any sort.  Her desire to know what it could be grew strong; two tiny tacks held it firmly in its place.  Then the man turned and eyed the inmates of the room, who were by this time giving undivided attention to him and his bit of paper Presently he spoke, in a quiet, respectful tone: 

“I’ve tacked up a nice little tract.  I thought maybe while you was waiting you might like something to read.  If one of you would read it aloud, all the rest could hear it.”  So saying, the man stooped and took up his tool-box and his tin pail, and went away, leaving the influences connected with those two or three strokes of his hammer to work for him through all time, and meet him at the judgment.  But if a bomb-shell had suddenly come down and laid itself in ruins it their feet, it could not have made a much more startled company than the tract-tacker left behind him.  A tract!—­actually tacked up on the wall, and waiting for some human voice to give it utterance!  A tract in a railroad depot!  How queer! how singular! how almost improper!  Why?  Oh, Ester didn’t know; it was so unusual.